Imperial Demonic's Journey From Belfast to Bloodstock: DIY Black Metal and Musical Evolution

0:04 Hi, you have done to censure? Wow for you. This is the pipe Man here on the Adventures pipe Man W four c Y Radio and I'm here with. Come on Cos from Imperial Demonic. Nice here at Bloodstock. Yeah. Have you guys ever been to Bloodstock before? This is our first time. Uh, I don't know if you've been attending before. No, that was my first time. Just being at the festival end playing. Yeah. Nice, pretty fucking cool festival, right.

0:46 Yeah, big step up for us. I love I mean I love this festival. I do festivals all over to you as UK and Europe, and this is one of my favorites because we're like a true metal festival and like one big family and community here. Yeah to heritage absolutely. So that's one of the things. People are so friendly over here, you. Know, no doubt right, like like they just go have their way to be friendly. There's no outsiders here. We're all fucking outsiders together. Yeah, super inclusive. So tell us a. Little bit, well the listeners, tell them a little bit about your band and you know things they should know, not genre. I don't give us shit about genre, and I'm sure you don't neither. Like just from your artist's perspective.

1:31 Yeah, well, I mean, I guess it's hard. It's it's hard to downstoad. We are a black metal bond from Belfast, Northern Irelands. We've been going for about four years. Four years yeah, yeah, we're entirely diy nice. So we started off as a one month project. We beat. The two of us basically produced the first EP together. Since then we've become a five bond bond and things of snowball pretty quickly. We've played shows and festivals across UK and in Europe. We've been pretty lucky there. We released R E P through a small label, black Line Music, Sweden. I know we're rapping ups releasing our first full length album which we've written. It's our first effort writing together as a band.

2:18 Nice. Why do you find the difference is now that doing it as a band opposed to just a duo or even single. I guess The first EP is Cam's Child quite literally, it was written by him. All of this, this, the new upcoming album is essentially where Baby. We all took over parts. In record writing, recording and. Just the camera mentioned. It's all the oi so engineered by us, recorded and it's currently mixed by me. It's gonna be mastered as well, So a lot of a lot of songs, a lot of fast temposts. That's what we're all about. Yeah. Well, what I love about too is something you said is everybody plays their part, everybody puts something into it.

3:05 So that's how you create something really unique because it blends different opinions, different influences and you come up with this thing that nobody else has. Yeah, definitely, And I guess that's that's one of the biggest differences as well, going from the VP, which is just me, to this album. It's a much wider blend of influences. So it's black metal, but there's some technical elements, there's some death metal elements, there's some atmospheric elements. So it's definitely we're starting to lean into our own and find our own signs now that it's five guys and not just one. And I mean that takes that takes the load off me having right everything by myself.

3:45 Right, But it's cool. It's cool having a more varied signs and I think I think that's gonna help it. It's gonna give us wider appeal as well, because again, like it's a it's a. It's such a it's a wider blend of influences, not just my three favorite bands for example, you know which are well the comparison's Hard to Shake, a dark Funeral Dissection and dimon borgear Nice. But I mean from day one there was also a good bit of Mardock, Derveg and our Fryheads, Belle Fa Gore, Nordia Evil Mardock. That's all still in there, and we all love those bonds. But it's just you evolved. Yeah. I think that's the key word is evolution, is that the sign has shifted. There was more comparisons in the past, and we were just starting off and now it's kind of we're finding our own signs.

4:32 I like the element of when it comes to like the emotional side of things cranks to the max. It's almost like this emotional despair, and so I just wanted to sort of capture that with the new composition compositions. So yes, it's kind of melodic, but it's quite heavy as well. It's really fast. So that's what ber O boys. Yeah, Well, that's why I love about black Belt today too, because in nineteen eighty I was in this little record store in the Valley in Los Angeles. Who the record store clerk there just. Happened to be Brian Slagel and he starred Metal Blade Records from working there as a record clerk, and he gave me this album, Venom Welcome to Hell. And it's so funny because by today's standards, they wouldn't be black metal.

5:23 And even when I listened to him today, compared to them, I'm like, the sound kind of poppy now. Then it was like, oh, this is the most scary, brutal shit every Yeah. And the one thing I love nowadays is black metal artists are like some of the nicest people. Like people think they're the fucking scariest people, and they're the nicest people. And I was at a show way back when and I had it confirmed to me recently by an interview with Venom that this was a true story. It was Slayer Exodus and Venom playing and chron Knows knocked out Tom Rajah backstage. He's like, you guys turned black metal, we're black metal, and like it turned into words and then he knocked out tom ur So it's pretty funny that you go from that to now, you know, black metal is such a large community and has advanced a lot. Like I listen to music now and listen to then, Like you're talking about heavy and fast and it is so much heavier and so much faster now, which I like, I think.

6:32 Sorry, I think personally it's all about that musical expression, getting that kind of anger, yeah, and doing that in an artistic way. You know. That's I think it's the best therapy ever because of that. Yeah, I think the think about black metals well, like I think everybody wants a piece now because it's a genre that carries a lot of uh heritage, so that that word gets thrown rhynd a lots, so whether Bond like say they're a black metal influenced or know some kind of some kind some kind of stub genre. But we were never really trying to prove ourselves. It was more just about putting out music in the truest expression and making music that we want to we enjoy listening to and we enjoy playing. Yeah, So we really have nothing to prove. I mean, we're all we stand pretty firmly behind.

7:22 Our product. So I think it's more just we're here to get eyes and ears on it, and I and you know, I'm sure we're with confidence, saying like the music really speaks for itself quite literally. Yeah, I'm just really excited for people to hear the new stuff, which will be released at some point. Yeah, and we've been really pleasantly surprised, you know, coming from you know, Northern Ireland's a little islands just off off the coast of the UK. This this is this is our biggest show to date. Nice, so it really is a massive opportunity and it was a really nice surprise, frankly to be asked. You know, we're ambitious, but we're still pretty humble, unrealistic. Typical DIY too.

8:03 We are one hundred percent DIY, so yeah, it's it's humbling, but it's also quite flattering as well. I think to get here, you know, from day one when I started the bond, it was like, well, you know, I want to do vaking, I want to do bloodstocks. That we're here so within four years, that's I think that's pretty that's pretty good going. Especially being asked you know, to do that, which is just it's kind of surreal. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and yes it is. And I love I was just at Vakin and I love bloodstock. So if you're going to start at one of them. I think this is the one to start at because it is such a metal family, such a community here. And going back to what I said in the beginning, you said stuff. That was why I said what I did is like fucking genres, Like there's so many micro and sub genres, and people are labeled, and you're an artist.

8:51 You shouldn't be labeled. Worry about the label. Just do your expression and be you and whatever that turns out to be. That's what's cool. Yeah. One, is there anything we haven't covered that you want the listeners to know about? Plus tell them about your socials, how to connect you, and most importantly, buy your merch because if they don't buy your merch, they can't fucking listen to my show. Yeah, one hundred percent. Actually, we need to get March over to the over to the merch sellers after this. Yeah, yeah, I mean again being di y, being small, limited amnths of March, so get it while it's going. I guess right. We had to. We had to close the bond comp for today. So yeah, we got our March with us. Get a shirt, get a vinyl. Once they're gone, they're gone. We don't really reprint anything, and uh.

9:40 See that's cool too. Yeah, it's it's it's I guess it's pretty exclusive. I mean usually we booked things pretty small botches. True, Yeah, that's very cool. But yeah, socials were on everything. We just secured Imperialdemonic dot com. I figured why the hell not, so we're everywhere. Instagram is probably the most octave. Yeah, so Imperial Demonic. Video of TikTok as well. So yeah, we tried. We tried TikTok for a bit. We might come back to it, but it was kind of you know. It's a lot of freaking work man. You know, too much. Sorry, well, yeah, the y bound and then having TikTok on top of that.

10:21 Yeah, Like I feel bad for bands nowadays, Like in the eighties you did tape trading and stuff like that, you'd have to do all these ten million other things, Like you don't have enough time in the day. The market's so overly saturated. It's just very, very difficult to find your own voice. It's like literally finding a needle in a haystock, no doubt, no doubt. Yeah, it's hard even just to stand out, you know, talking away TikTok. I think fortunately or unfortunately, I don't know, but we're almost it wouldn't work. If we tried to do the viral thing. I think it doesn't wouldn't fly. That's the difference. So we want do and. I think and I think the fact that we don't want to do it that would come through anyway. So I think you just got to be true to yourself and play to your strengths.

11:09 And I think it makes you a true musician, because like true musicians, they don't set out to be rock stars. Honestly, as much as I like, absolutely love playing shows, I really don't care for the entire like everything around. I just want to be on stage, grout my instrument, play the show, go back to my studio, write more riffs, record. You know. That's that's literally all I want for music, you. Know, And that's the way it should be. That's the way it should be your musicians, And that's the passion. And if you're not having fun doing this, you're in the wrong business, because there's a lot of things that aren't fun at all. So yeah, well it's absolute blast to be here. And who's gonna be cliche, you know, it's a dream come true. But yeah, it's a big one for us.

11:54 It's a real privilege and we can't we can't wait to go up there and play for all these people. I can't wait for you to experience playing that Bloodstock and I am sure you will have a massive crowd out there and the dream will be even better once you're on stage. Yeah, looking forward to it. Well, thanks a lot for being here and thanks for being on the Adventures and pipe Man. Yeah, thanks for having us. Thank you so much. Thank you for listening to the Adventures of Pipe Man. I'm w for CUI Radio.